Users of the World Wide Web distributed computing environment may freely send and retrieve data across long distances and between remote computing devices. The Web, implemented on the Internet, presents users with documents called “web pages” that may contain information as well as “hyperlinks” that allow the users to select and connect to related web sites. The web pages may be stored on remote computing devices, or servers, as hypertext-encoded files. The servers use Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), or other protocols to transfer the encoded files to client users. Many users may remotely access the web sites stored on network-connected computing devices from a personal computer (PC) through a browser application running on the PC.
The browser application may act as an interface between user PCs and remote computing devices and may allow the user to view or access data that may reside on any remote computing device connected to the PC through the World Wide Web and browser interface. Typically, the local user PC and the remote computing device may represent a client and a server, respectively. Further, the local user PC or client may access Web data without knowing the source of the data or its physical location. Publication of Web data may be accomplished by simply assigning a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) to data that refers to the local file. To a local client, the Web may appear as a single, coherent data delivery and publishing system in which individual differences between other clients or servers may be hidden.
A system may provide web site proprietors with web site user demographics information and is generally described in U.S. application Ser. No. 09/080946, “DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION GATHERING AND INCENTIVE AWARD SYSTEM AND METHOD” to Bistriceanu et al. and U.S. application Ser. No. 11/416593, “ROBUST SILO BASED SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE” to Bohannon, the entire disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference. Generally, the system may include users, web site proprietors, and an enterprise system hosting a central web site. The users may register with the central web site and may earn “points” for performing specific on- or off-line tasks in exchange for disclosing their demographic information during registration. On-line activity may be described in e-mails that are sent to the user by his consent during a registration process. For example, users may earn points by selecting hyperlinks embedded in e-mails The users may then redeem their earned points at participating proprietors for merchandise or services. Generally, the central web site manages the system by performing a number of tasks including: maintaining all user demographic information, tracking user point totals, and awarding points according to specific, proprietor-defined rules. Proprietors may market their products or services to specific users based on the provided demographic information.
Typically, users register with web-based services by a “double opt-in” process. Two interactions by the user are required to complete a double opt-in registration. First, the user must be solicited, for example, by an unsolicited e-mail or through another service to which he is a member and has given consent for solicitations. The solicitation will allow the user to submit required registration information to complete a first “co-registration” step. The user is considered “single opted in” after submitting the information requested from a solicitation. Upon receipt of the registration information, the service sends another e-mail to the user to confirm that the e-mail address given during the co-registration step is actually associated with the user. By responding to the confirmation, the user demonstrates their desire to be a member of the service and gives permission to the service to begin sending information to the user. Thus, only upon receipt of a user's registration information, either in response to a solicitation e-mail or from a registration website accessed by the user, and submission and receipt of a confirmation e-mail, will a web service user be fully registered. Because there are two steps a user must complete before registration in the double opt-in process, twice as many opportunities exist for the process to fail either through user inaction, user disinterest, or data errors.